I’ve now figured out how to embed home video in the blog in a nice, streaming player. The Wordpress “Stream Video Player” plugin is the core technology; once this is in place it’s a simple matter to extract the video from the digital video camera, format it up with Windows Movie Maker (or equivalent software), convert it to a .flv file (Flash-format video), and inject streaming metadata into it. Then you just upload and embed it into the post!
The result is a very nice embedded video player that supports random access to the video and doesn’t give you the issues that come with using YouTube. The video is hosted locally and I can freely remove it or change it if I need to.
So here’s the first video I made — Thomas demonstrating his expertly-constructed Bionicle vehicle, complete with functioning weapon. The age range on the box is from 9 to 16 years old; he built the whole thing himself (with just a bit of guidance from me) at age 8. Note the complexity and the sheer number of parts, including a functioning gear train! Also included is bonus footage of Jonathan fussing.
Edit: I’ve removed the self-hosted movie. See the next entry for the Vimeo-hosted version.
